Halo: The Master Chief Collection offers freebies to make up for mistakes

After encountering bugs and hiccups at launch, Halo is making it up to loyal gamers with some freebies. For those who have played Halo: The Master Chief Collection since launch through today, December 19, a number of in-app goodies will be given for free along with a 1-month Xbox Live Gold membership.

343 Industries says that if you've been a loyal gamer since launch, you'll get:

1 Month of Xbox Live Gold

Exclusive In-Game Nameplate

Exclusive In-Game Avatar

Additionally, Halo will also give out:

Halo 3: ODST Campaign – Development has just started on the campaign for Halo 3: ODST, which will be available within Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and upgraded to 1080p resolution, running at 60fps. It will be available for free to anyone who has played Halo: The Master Chief Collection since launch (11.11.14) through today (12.19.14).* Thanks to our friends at Bungie for creating the original "Halo 3: ODST" campaign.

"Relic" Halo 2: Anniversary Multiplayer Map – Available via a free content update to Halo: The Master Chief Collection, we will reimagine the fan-favorite map "Relic," fully remastered and running at 1080p resolution and 60fps. We chose this map based on its suitability for Slayer and Objective modes and its ability to support teams of varying sizes. And you can trust that Certain Affinity will tune and tweak the map to make it even better than you remember.

343 Industries will rollout a content release update soon that will add 10 episodes of Spartan Ops for Halo 4 as well as fix other lingering issues.

If only my xb1 was working. Ever since I started using update preview(in oct.) I haven't been able to play a game on it just only able to boot apps. & the mods. are useless on the forum they just say will submit the report to the developer when its not the problem with the games but the bootloader for games

So how do they qualify a 'loyal' gamer? I've been playing campaign but avoided multiplayer because of the issues. Do I miss out just because I didn't bother with something I paid for and they failed to deliver?

Personally I would still have an issue even if I wasn't playing it. I paid for it and it wasn't up to standard, so why should I not be compensated even if I stopped playing? Ubisoft gave compensation to everyone who bought Unity whether it not they played it -- even as much as giving an entire AAA game from their collection if you bought the season pass -- whereas 343 are using the ambiguous term of 'loyal gamers' which is totally up to their discretion.

Agreed. I looked through all the menus but haven't play anything. I decided to play other games and wait for fixes, rather than get aggravated and pissed off. I paid full pop. Do I miss out for not playing a broken game?

I can understand the badge, nameplate and free month of Gold being only for people who struggled with online play. It's recognition for the stress they went through. And it's nice that the new multiplayer map is for everyone, regardless of online play.
I'm quite upset that the ODST campaign is only for online players. Even people who chose not to play online had a diminished experience. One of the largest draw cards for Halo MCC was the online play, and many of us decided that it wasn't worth trying until they fixed it. We don't all have hours to wait in the day for a few matches. Matchmaking still has issues today, not to mention that the campaign had its own share of problems too.
So where is our compensation?
Edit: As an example of the matchmaking issues that persist, I went to play online just in case today still counted for the free items. I spent 25 minutes in matchmaking with it constantly saying 'Found Players' and 'Joining Session' before giving up and trying another game mode. I waiting a further ten minutes for matchmaking before calling it and quitting the game. So people are still experiencing matchmaking issues -- even if they buy the game today, or tomorrow, or get it for Christmas -- but many of them will not be compensated.

You are misinterpreting the eligibility requirements. Anyone who played the game at all while being connected to Xbox Live will get the freebies. You didn't have to play an online multiplayer match. You just had to be signed in:

All online users that have played “Halo: The Master Chief Collection” between Nov. 11, 2014 and Dec. 19, 2014 will be eligible

Engadget's article said you had to play multiplayer at least once to quality. That is total BS, as I played only campaigns and avoided multiplayer due to the reported problems, figuring I'd get to it later. I preordered Halo MCC, which should be plenty to qualify me as a "loyal customer" deserving to get the free perks. Instead of making up for the mistakes, they are pissing more people off. Remember these are simply remakes of OLD games - don't sour the whole Halo experience for folks by doing this....